1. Technical Field
The presently disclosed embodiments are directed to characterizing a media curler for use in a printing system.
2. Brief Discussion of Related Art
Media curlers are frequently used to impose a curl onto media. In cases where the media is fed onto a vacuum or electrostatic hold-down transport, a curl towards the media transport typically improves hold-down performance. In other applications, it may be desirable to remove a curl from media before feeding the media to downstream devices and/or before the media appears in an output device of a printing system. For example, in a direct marking printing system a distance between print nozzle ejection surface of a print head and the media in the printing region can be important for proper operation of the printing system. To ensure sufficient media flatness, a curl can be imposed on the media before the media enters the printing region using a media curler.
Media curlers can have an actuator to control an amount of curl applied by the media curler. In this manner, different actuator settings can impose different amounts of curl onto the media. Besides the actuator setting, the amount of imposed curl can be a function of many parameters, such as weight, grain direction, thickness, elastic modulus, moisture content, and the like of the media. These parameters (e.g., actuator and/or media parameters) can cause curls imposed by a media curler to be unpredictable, especially if different types of media are used.